An Open Letter to Ruth M. Kolpack,
and all the women who have been or are being abused by Church Hierarchy
Dear Ruth,
You and I have never met. But I post this letter experiencing a profound sorrow and anger over the treatment that you received from the leader of your diocese, Bishop Robert Morlino. I know that many other Catholics and people of good will feel the same sorrow and anger.
Your Bishop summoned you for a 10 minute meeting in which you were never given an opportunity to defend your paper, indeed the philosophy which underlined the concepts of that paper. You were instead, told to denounce (renounce?) the ideas expressed in your paper and to take an oath of loyalty and orthodoxy.
But a request to denounce (renounce) the concepts expressed in your paper is in itself, an affront to orthodoxy. It would require you to renounce your freedom of conscience. That freedom of conscience is a gift from God, not from the Church. It is a gift given to all women and men---regardless of their race, color, gender, or creed (or lack of a creed). It is a gift that is your birthright as a human being. To denounce your paper (and your freedom of conscience) would be to deny your basic rights as a human being, the right to express your thoughts, in freedom, and as your life experience has formed them.
As far as orthodoxy is concerned, your Bishop should have known that freedom of conscience has always been defended in the Church. In the Decrees and Declarations of Vatican Council II, there is a document entitled “Declaration of Religious Freedom.” Paraphrasing from the document: ‘No one should ever be forced to act in a way that is contrary to his or her beliefs. No one is to be forced by other individuals, by social groups or by any other human power, to act against those rights. This right should be written into civil law as a basic human right everywhere on earth.’except in your diocese—and many others.
As experienced by many people, many women, and by you, Ruth, Primacy of Conscience is rarely preached by the hierarchy, and seldom if ever defended as a God-given right.
Our Church leaders preach a gospel of social justice, but always for the vast multitude, nameless and faceless. They preach for the people “out there.” It certainly is not applied to those who work within the Church---for those who have names and faces. It is not for the people who give so much of their time, energy, love and life to their ministries. For people like you, Ruth, there is none of that Justice that the Church preaches and proclaims so proudly, and practices so poorly. That is why church teaching on social justice rings hollow; It is not practiced at home.
Unlike your Bishop, Ruth, I read your thesis completely and I also noted your sources. I do not believe that your Bishop fired you on the basis on the thesis. The ideas you expressed did not spring up there a week ago Thursday, nor in 2003 when you submitted your work to St. Francis Seminary. The expressed concepts have been spoken in the Church for many years. And unless Bishop Morlino is a mental and theological Rip Van Winkle (asleep for 25 years) he has heard them before. The people who wrote the books and articles that you used for sources are theologians and scripture scholars who have not been silenced by the Church---they are still writing books. Elizabeth A. Johnson (one of the authors you used for source material) just completed another book before the end of 2008.
Instead, Ruth, your Bishop was prompted by frightened people (from your parish?) who have heard you speak or express comments that startled them, that shook their beliefs about God and how they think about God.
You wrote that, “the very celebration that invites us into communion with God and one another is adulterated with exclusive language.” These are scary words, terrifying ideas for those who want to cling to certitude and find security in conformism. Your anonymous ‘spies’ are fear-full.
They cannot control the events of their world, their nation, their economy, their city, and their front street, maybe not even in their families. But by golly, they will do all that they can to control superficial beliefs to which they have clung all of their lives, never having grown beyond conventional wisdom.
There is a sense of security in being a conformist—albeit a false one. Your pastor listened to these people and so did your Bishop, mistaking conformity with orthodoxy. The very concept of describing God as a woman, of using feminine words to describe God threatens the male chauvinistic model of hierarchical Church. God couldn’t possibly have feminine attributes! Not when the Church, whose leadership is comprised of men who use only masculine terms to describe God, tells us that the only correct pronoun to use in speaking of God is HE!
But the language that we use over and over again reveals our deepest held beliefs, values, and working principles. Ruth, as you have believed, written, and experienced it; Our Church does not value women very much. They can clean the church, cook for church dinners, decorate the church, keep house, mother children, visit the sick, and teach---but not be Church leaders. The Hierarchy does not view women’s ideas, experiences, their hopes and dreams as being as valuable as men’s. We certainly saw this in Africa as the Pope visited the bishops, priests, and leaders of the Muslims. He spoke about women’s rights but did not even consider speaking to the women, to the women who work in the parish churches, or to the women who are consecrated religious. After all, who are women?
Ruth, you ideas are considered dangerous by the head of your diocese, whose leadership style is replete with paranoia, is reactionary, and is adversarial. He apparently believes that acting as a bully is part and parcel of his God bestowed authority as an ecclesial leader. He is a pathetic example of the type of leadership that Jesus DID NOT encourage in his apostles. “Do not be as the great ones of the earth who lord it over those assigned to them….”
The ecclesial environment in your diocese is not peaceful, just, or a place for creative energizing. But it is selective, exclusive, and filled with suspicion. And women who are educated, who think, who act, who have the courage to believe that God can be proclaimed in a new way---are considered most dangerous.
Yet, in spite of all the degradation foisted upon women over the centuries, in the name of God, your paper concludes with the hope that women, women like you, Ruth, “will (continue to) expose the incongruity between what the Church says and what it does, and challenge it to take the next step to embrace the full dignity of all people.”
Ruth, never lose hope! Never lose hope for the future, because if hope for the future is lost, there will be no effort, no energy to do the hard work of the present, now.
May God, SHE WHO IS, be your support, your Mother, your Comfort, your Courage in the days, months and years ahead.
Love,
John Chuchman, MA
Pastoral Bereavement Educator and Companion
(Published with John Chuchman's permission)
poetman@torchlake.com and www.torchlake.com/poetman
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